The brother of a Pakistani social media starlet, sentenced to life in 2019 for murdering the young woman “for honor” in 2016, has been acquitted on appeal in Pakistan, his lawyer announced on Monday.
The victim, Qandeel Baloch, whose real name is Fauzia Azeem, a 26-year-old brunette with clear eyes, was nicknamed the Pakistani Kim Kardashian.
This starlet of social networks always appeared there with neat hair and makeup, in provocative poses, sometimes considered scandalous by her most conservative compatriots.
Her brother, Muhammad Waseem, who proudly admitted strangling her for her “intolerable behavior”, was sentenced to life in prison.
AFP
“He was fully acquitted” by a court in the city of Multan, in the east of the country, his lawyer Sardar Mehboob told AFP, without giving further details. The court order has not yet been made public.
The assassination of the young woman had caused a shock wave in Pakistan, where hundreds of women are killed each year by relatives on the pretext that they have tarnished the family honor.
Since a recent change in Pakistani law, the parents of a victim of an honor killing can no longer forgive his killer, often a family member, which until then made it possible to remove the latter from legal action.
But the judge in charge of the file can always choose not to retain the notion of honor among the charges, in which case the murderer can always ask for absolution.
At first, the parents of Qandeel Baloch had affirmed that there would be “no forgiveness” for his son, before changing his mind and apologizing for his act.
A lawyer for the mother said she had given “her consent” to pardon her son, according to her lawyer Safdar Shah.
Muhammad Waseem is expected to be released in the coming days, following spending less than six years in prison.
“Waseem can now be free while Qandeel has been sentenced for overstepping the bounds of what is considered ‘acceptable’ behavior for women in Pakistan,” Sanam Maher, author of a Qandeel biographer, told AFP. Baloch.
“After today’s verdict, one wonders who killed her?” she added.
Three months following the events, the Pakistani Parliament had unanimously adopted a law once morest this scourge.
